Law Commons^™

Time Off Work For Menstruation: A Good Idea?, Deborah Widiss

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In February 2023, Spain became the first European country to guarantee “menstrual leave” for workers, joining several countries, mostly in East Asia, that have long done so. It has also become increasingly common for companies to offer paid time off to menstruators as a discretionary benefit. Reports on these developments are almost always accompanied by criticism from self-identified feminists voicing concern that the policies will spur discrimination against women or reinforce stereotypes about menstruators as incapable workers. This echoes earlier arguments over maternity leave. In their groundbreaking book, Menstruation Matters, Bridget Crawford and Emily Waldman expose myriad ways in which …

The Effect Of The Pro Act On Secondary Activity And International Trade, Christopher R. Rodenbaugh

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

No abstract provided.

Leveling The Playing Field: How To Get International Student-Athletes Paid Under Name, Image And Likeness, Justin Auh

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

No abstract provided.

Ready To Do The Difficult Work Ahead: The Legal Legacy Of Senator Harry Reid, Robert Lemus, Sarah Voehl

Nevada Law Journal Forum

This White Paper examines the legal legacy of Harry Reid, who served Nevada in the Senate for thirty years and rose to the position of Majority Leader from 2007 to 2015. Senator Reid's work on land and water policy, climate change, immigration, gaming, and labor deeply affected Nevada and the United States as a whole. Through his positions of leadership, he secured funding for critical infrastructure projects, protected public lands, championed renewable energy, passed the Affordable Care Act, fought for immigration reform, and advocated for labor and gaming issues. This paper concludes that Senator Reid's legal legacy is a powerful …

Mobilizable Labor Law, Scott L. Cummings, Andrew Elmore

Faculty Scholarship

In the history of new labor localism, city-level living wage ordinances—emerging in the 1990s with Los Angeles leading the way—have generally been understood as a second-best, limited antipoverty device designed to raise wage floors, with only indirect effects on organized labor. Drawing upon original archival materials, this Article offers an alternative reading of the history of the living wage in Los Angeles, showing how it was designed and operationalized as a proactive tool to rebuild union density and reshape city politics. Doing so makes four key contributions. First, the Article theorizes and empirically examines the living wage as a pioneering …

On The Lawfulness Of Awards To Class Representatives, Benjamin Gould

Cardozo Law Review de•novo

When class actions are settled or the class prevails on the merits, successful class representatives are often net losers: their individual recovery does not cover the opportunity costs and other losses they have incurred in representing the class. For that reason among others, they frequently receive an award on top of their relief as class members. The federal courts of appeals had unanimously approved these awards until recently, when the Eleventh Circuit relied on two nineteenth-century cases to hold that they are always unlawful. That decision is now the subject of a cert petition. The Eleventh Circuit got it wrong. …

Remotely Relevant: Addressing Employment-Based Immigration Worksite Location Requirements In The Remote Workspace, Rachel Refkin

Cardozo Law Review de•novo

The worksite location requirements for the PERM process for immigrant visas and LCAs for specialty occupation nonimmigrant visas have lost their relevance during the revolution of the white-collar remote workspace within the United States under current DOL guidelines. Although on its face foreign nationals working outside the office appears to be a novel legal issue, remote work within the United States has been an insurmountable hurdle in the immigration space since telework gained popularity in the late twentieth century. It is possible to apply for both kinds of visas for telework, but adherence to the Farmer Memo appears to be …

Former Whistleblowers: Why The False Claims Act's Anti-Retaliation Provision Should Protect Former Employees, Jim Stehlin

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Since the Civil War, the False Claims Act has served as a tool to combat fraud perpetrated against the government. Early fraud by government contractors during the Civil War was quaint: contractors selling the same horse twice or filling a Union Army contract for sugar with sand. Today, the government recovers billions of dollars annually through actions under the FCA.

Essential to the FCA’s functioning are “relators,” private citizens who serve as whistleblowers incentivized to report fraud by receipt of a percentage of whatever amount the government recovers in damages. The government relies on relators to blow the whistle on …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Beyond The Business Case: Moving From Transactional To Transformational Inclusion, Jamillah Bowman Williams

Seattle University Law Review

While workplace diversity is a hot topic, the extent to which the diversity management movement has effectively improved intergroup relations and reduced racial inequality remains unclear.1 Despite large investments in diversity and inclusion training and other company wide initiatives, historically excluded groups remain vastly underrepresented in leadership and the most lucrative careers, such as finance, law, and technology. This calls the efficacy of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts into question, particularly with respect to reducing racial inequality in the workplace.

This Article explains why it is time for organizational leaders to move beyond the transactional case for diversity and …

How Firms Turn Middle Managers Into Diversity Leaders, Alexandra Kalev, Frank Dobbin

Seattle University Law Review

In 2007, the Conference Board published a piece calling middle managers “the biggest roadblock to diversity and inclusion” for standing in the way of change efforts. Today, many chief diversity officers report that they have failed both to diversify middle management and to get middle managers involved in promoting inclusion. We explore popular diversity programs that create “paper” or “symbolic” principles for achieving diversity (diversity policy statements and guidelines for hiring, promotion, and discharge), as well as programs that engage middle managers in promoting diversity (special recruitment and mentoring programs, and diversity task forces). “Paper” policies often fall flat, but …

Gender And The Constitutional Theory Of The Firm, Jamee K. Moudud

Seattle University Law Review

This Article adds to the literature that has linked feminist economics to foreign trade and development. It argues that two key factors need to be in place jointly if efforts to promote gender equity are to succeed. On the one hand it argues that foreign debt is an important constraint to domestic progressive social policies of all kinds as it increases the power of international creditors who generally tend to support austerity policies. On the other hand, while alleviating the burden of foreign debt via exportpromotion policies is necessary, it is by no means a sufficient condition to promote domestic …

Court’S Choice Of Law Ruling Undermines Washington Community Property Law: A Critique Of Shanghai Commercial Bank V. Chang, Brian D. Hulse

Seattle University Law Review

This Article deals with the issues that arise when Washington courts face the following scenario. One spouse enters into a contract without the joinder (and perhaps without the knowledge) of the other spouse. Both spouses are domiciled in Washington. The contract has contacts with one or more jurisdictions other than Washington and is generally governed as to validity and interpretation by the law of another jurisdiction. The contracting spouse defaults and the other party to the contract obtains a judgment on the contract. The court confronts a question about the property to which the plaintiff will have recourse to collect …

Policing For Profit: A Constitutional Analysis Of Washington State’S Civil Forfeiture Laws, Julia Doherty

Seattle University Law Review

The summer of 2020 reignited a conversation about the relationship between race and policing in the United States. While many have taken the opportunity to scrutinize the racially discriminate components of our criminal justice system, comparable aspects of civil law must be equally scrutinized. A particular area of concern pertains to racially biased policing and the concept of “policing for profits” with Black, Indigenous, and people of color communities (BIPOC), which is accomplished mainly through civil asset forfeiture at a state and federal level.

The World Moved On Without Me: Redefining Contraband In A Technology-Driven World For Youth Detained In Washington State, Stephanie A. Lowry

Seattle University Law Review

If you ask a teenager in the United States to show you one of their favorite memories, they will likely show you a picture or video on their cell phone. This is because Americans, especially teenagers, love cell phones. Ninety-seven percent of all Americans own a cell phone according to a continuously updated survey by the Pew Research Center. For teenagers aged thirteen to seventeen, the number is roughly 95%. For eighteen to twenty-nine-year-olds, the number grows to 100%. On average, eight to twelve-year-old’s use roughly five and a half hours of screen media per day, in comparison to thirteen …

“What’S Past Is Prologue”: The Story Of The Sale Of The University Of Puget Sound School Of Law To Seattle University, Annette E. Clark

Seattle University Law Review

When the Seattle University Law Review editorial staff invited me to write an updated history of the Seattle University School of Law in honor of our 50th anniversary, I planned to start the narrative with the year 1989, which was where the prior written history (authored by former Law Library Director Anita Steele and published by the Law Review) had left off. It also happens to be the year when I graduated from this law school and joined the tenure-track faculty, so 1989 seemed like a propitious place to begin. However, as I began to do the research necessary to …

A Path Forward: Litigating The Treaty-Based Claims Of Children Sexually Abused In The Indian Health Service System, Peter B. Janci, Stephen F. Crew, Zachary Pangares

Seattle University Law Review

In 1855, representatives for the United States traveled to the Great Plains with orders to seek peace with Blackfoot Nation so the westward expansion of “civilized” white settlers could continue without interruption. After weeks of negotiations, the United States plan materialized. The terms of these promises were memorialized on October 17, 1855, in a treaty between the United States government and Blackfoot Nation.

One hundred and sixty-seven years later, representatives for the United States and the Blackfoot Nation convened in Rapid City, South Dakota to discuss the U.S. government’s breach of the treaty’s terms. Eight Native men, including three from …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Blood On The Tracks, Thomas D. Russell

Seattle University Law Review

Streetcars were the greatest American tortfeasors of the early twentieth century, injuring approximately one in 331 urban Americans in 1907. This empirical study presents never-before-assembled data concerning litigation involving streetcar companies in California during the early twentieth century.

This Article demonstrates the methodological folly of relying upon appellate cases to describe the world of trial court litigation. Few cases went to trial. Plaintiffs lost about half their lawsuits. When plaintiffs did win, they won very little money. Regarding the bite taken out of the street railway company, the Superior Court was a flea.

Professor Gary Schwartz and Judge Richard Posner …

Pandémie Et Travail De Plateforme: Réglementation Du « Lieu De Travail » Après Le Covid-19 Aux Usa [The Gig And The Platform: Regulating The “Workplace” After The Pandemic], Ruben J. Garcia

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Racial Pay Equity In “White” Collar Workplaces, Nantiya Ruan

Scholarly Works

Part I outlines the many ways that corporate employers fail in racial equity efforts and the barriers that have been put into place to keep BIPOC workers from succeeding. Drawing from industrial organizational psychology and sociology, I identify six distinct challenges that must be remedied or ameliorated in order for BIPOC to achieve pay equity in the corporate climate. Part II identifies and analyzes the decades of litigation and class action settlements that have tried and failed to address the persistent lack of BIPOC representation in the financial industry. I categorize these cases into three waves of litigation intended to …

Work Hierarchies And Social Control Of Laborers, Nantiya Ruan

Scholarly Works

Some labor dynamics transcend place and time: workers provide the labor; management oversees the work; owners capitalize on the fruits of that labor. This hierarchy repeats across nations, industries, and eras. The actors in these stories have set roles and a particular stage to act upon. We are familiar with a narrative wherein the worker is forced to toil under extreme conditions, the manager motivates the worker to produce faster and more, and the owner reaps the rewards. And we usually know where our sympathies lie.

Professor McMurtry-Chubb's latest book, Race Unequals: Overseer Contracts, White Masculinities, and the Formation of …

Never Equals: Slavery, White Masculinities, And The Legacy Of Law In Today’S Workplace, Ann C. Mcginley

Scholarly Works

This essay discusses two themes of Race Unequals: (1) the role of law in creating and reinforcing gendered, classed, and raced identities on plantations in the Antebellum South; and (2) the existence of slavery's legacy today in workplaces and the law's frequent failure to remedy its damaging tentacles. Part II describes masculinities studies from the social sciences and Multidimensional Masculinities Theory in law and applies the theory to analyze the first theme. Part III considers slavery's legacy in today's workplaces and analyzes employment discrimination law's shortcomings in eliminating racism in workplaces. The essay concludes that White masculinities, established in the …

Work Hierarchies And The Social Control Of Workers, Nantiya Ruan

Scholarly Works

Creighton Law Review Symposium on Professor Teri A. McMurtry-Chubb’s book, Race Unequals: Overseer Contracts, White Masculinities, and the Formation of Managerial Identity in the Plantation Economy.

Investment Bankers And Inclusive Corporate Leadership, Afra Afsharipour

Seattle University Law Review

Few major deals happen without the engagement and advice of investment bankers. Whether a company is undertaking an initial public offering or engaging in a large merger or acquisition deal, investment bankers play a central role in advising corporate executives. Successful investment bankers are devoted to cultivating relationships with executives. And these relationships place bankers in a position to earn tens of millions in fees for their advisory and service roles in connection with corporate dealmaking. Investment bankers’ constant endeavors to nurture relationships with executives, while also maximizing their own ability to enhance fees, commonly leads to allegations of double-dealing, …

Selective Patronage, Omari Scott Simmons

Seattle University Law Review

Contemporary academic corporate governance narratives have a blind spot. They focus on institutions, rules, regulations, processes, procedures, intermediaries, and market forces. Yet, missing in this narrative, is the impact of corporate leadership. Ignoring the “black box” of corporate leadership, particularly individual actors, renders an incomplete descriptive assessment as well as potential miscalculations. The examination of key historical figures and their corporate activism provides an important lens through which to identify potential challenges and opportunities related to the contemporary ESG movement.

Generally, this essay examines corporate leadership’s potential to address socio-political issues through the prism of Civil Rights Movement activism. Specifically, …

Reframing The Dei Case, Veronica Root Martinez

Seattle University Law Review

Corporate firms have long expressed their support for the idea that their organizations should become more demographically diverse while creating a culture that is inclusive of all members of the firm. These firms have traditionally, however, not been successful at improving demographic diversity and true inclusion within the upper echelons of their organizations. The status quo seemed unlikely to move, but expectations for corporate firms were upended after the #MeToo Movement of 2017 and 2018, which was followed by corporate support of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement in 2020. These two social movements, while distinct in many ways, forced firms to rethink …

Women In Shareholder Activism, Sarah C. Haan

Seattle University Law Review

Even a cursory review of the history of American environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) shareholder activism reveals the presence of women leaders. This Article sketches some of this history and interrogates the role of women in the shareholder activism movement. That movement typically has involved claims by minority shareholders to corporate power; activists are nearly always on the margins of power, though minority shareholders may, collectively, represent a majority interest. This Article ascribes women’s leadership in shareholder activism to their longstanding position as outsiders to corporate organization. Women’s participation in shaping corporate policy—even from the margins—has provided women with …

#Metoo And The Corporation In Popular Culture, Brenda Cossman

Seattle University Law Review

#MeToo’s initial virtual explosion in the fall of 2017 was very much about Hollywood, with famous actresses speaking out against famous producers, media moguls and celebrities, exposing the ubiquity of sexual harassment and sexual violence in and around the entertainment industry. Since then, #MeToo has made its way into Hollywood representations without much irony. Films and television shows have explicitly taken up the #MeToo themes, exploring issues of sexual harassment and violence and its afterlives. Many television shows, from the relaunched version of Murphy Brown to Brooklyn Nine-Nine to The Good Fight have incorporated #MeToo themes into episodes exploring the …

Woke Capital Revisited, Jennifer S. Fan

Seattle University Law Review

Inclusive corporate leadership is now at the forefront of discussions related to corporate governance. Two corporate theories help to explain the rise in prominence of diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”) efforts in corporate leadership. First, an expanded definition of corporate purpose which elevated the idea of the importance of stakeholders, contributed to the momentum from business and legal quarters for broader corporate inclusion. Second, the increasing publicness of corporations—the social expectation of how large, typically public corporations should act given their position of power—also led to corporations becoming more active in the DEI space. It is against this backdrop that …